Market Demand Resulting in High Starting Salaries, “Signing Bonuses” for New Pharmacy Grads

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Entry-level salaries of $75,000 per year, hefty "signing bonuses," gifts of expensive foreign cars -- enticements like these may not be uncommon in the technology sector, but they now are being offered by your friendly neighborhood pharmacy, too.

The pharmacy profession -- once disparaged by the description "count, pour, lick and stick" -- is experiencing a severe shortage throughout the nation, according to Wayne K. Anderson, Ph.D., dean of the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. The shortage has caused salaries and benefits for pharmacists to skyrocket, while boosting enrollment in pharmacy programs and making admission to them more competitive.

At UB, Anderson said, recent pharmacy grads with a bachelor's or Pharm.D. degree report starting salaries in the Buffalo area of around $75,000 per year for jobs that just a few years ago were advertised at $30,000 or less. In some areas of the country where the shortage is most severe, he added, drugstore chains are advertising entry-level positions for pharmacists at $100,000 and higher.

"I know of new drugstores that even have had to postpone opening their doors because they cannot find enough qualified pharmacists," said Anderson. Some chains have reported having to curtail their hours due to the shortage.

"Salaries are going way up," Anderson said, "but it's not just salaries." He noted that students have found companies offering such inducements as repayment of student loans, free foreign cars, moving and living expenses, and "signing" bonuses. According to a recent survey by PharmacyWeek, a national pharmacists' employment publication, signing bonuses of more than $10,000 were reported by 15 percent of pharmacists. The average bonus was $5,727.

What's fueling the pharmacist shortage? According to Anderson, it's a combination of factors. One of the most important is the steep rise in the number of prescriptions being filled by Americans each year.

"As baby boomers age and as more drugs come on to the market designed to treat on an outpatient basis conditions that used to require hospitalization, the volume of prescriptions has increased dramatically," said Anderson.

U.S. spending for prescription drugs was $91 billion in 1998, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than doubling since 1990. And from 1992-98, the number of prescriptions purchased increased 37 percent, from 1.9 billion to 2.6 billion.

The National Community Pharmacists Association, which represents independent pharmacists, estimates that prescription volume may exceed more than 2.8 billion prescriptions and generate more than $125 billion in sales by year's end. Some estimate prescription volume to surpass the 4-billion mark by the year 2004.

The tremendous growth in the number and complexity of drugs that have come on the market, said Anderson, has caused pharmacists to take an increasingly active role in managing patients. Pharmacists are particularly involved with those conditions where multiple drugs are the norm, such as hypertension, asthma, diabetes, AIDS and cancer. The "count, pour, lick and stick" part of the job has, in most cases, been given to technicians so that pharmacists can share their expertise with consumers through individual patient consultation and through seminars and classes that community pharmacies are beginning to provide.

"Pharmacists are becoming drug-therapy and disease-state managers, experts in managing the complex pharmaceutical component of a patient's treatment, and working in close cooperation with physicians and other health-care providers," said Karl Fiebelkorn, assistant dean for student affairs and professional relations at the UB pharmacy school and clinical assistant professor. "This change in the role of the pharmacist also has been spurred by the new, six-year Pharm.D. degree that is emerging as the standard degree for pharmacists, providing students with an intensive education that has an increased clinical emphasis and which stresses drug-therapy management."

According to Fiebelkorn, the shortage was exacerbated by the fact that in some cases, students delayed graduation by a year to switch to the six-year degree program.

"At UB, when we went from a five-year B.S. program to a six-year Pharm.D. program, we decided to put in a three-year transitional period during which existing B.S. students either could stay with their five-year degree or track into the six-year program, thereby allowing a continual influx of qualified pharmacists into the marketplace," he said. "It was a way to cushion the impact of this switch to the new degree."

At the same time, he said, the school increased its enrollment from about 80 or 90 per class to 105, partly to offset the expected shortage.

"We plan to keep enrollment at these levels until we see the shortage coming under control," he added. "The market is demanding more graduates."